Google DeepMind veteran Yujia Li departs after 10 years spanning AlphaCode to Gemini
liyuajia · x · 2026-10-29
Yujia Li announced his departure from Google DeepMind after a decade. He joined in 2016, shortly before AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, and worked on graph neural nets, program synthesis, AlphaCode, and Gemini — from tool use to agentic capabilities to RSI.
He describes the accelerating pace of AI development as both exciting and nerve-wracking, saying he is cautiously optimistic, and plans to take a break before deciding what's next.
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